


Stop! In the Name of Love!

by SpaceTurtleOX



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Period Typical Bigotry, Teens being dumb, Wait El is What?, will they/won't they
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:22:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27140351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceTurtleOX/pseuds/SpaceTurtleOX
Summary: Wherein El likes girls, Will likes boys, and Mike probably needs a therapist at the end of it all.
Relationships: Will Byers & Mike Wheeler, Will Byers/Mike Wheeler
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Stop! In the Name of Love!

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: A little diddy I wrote for tumblr following the end of season two. After a little bit of cleaning up, I think I like it again. Let me know how ya feel!

El likes girls. Mike was still running through that revelation over and over again in his head. Not boys, not Mike- girls… The Snow Ball was running on its last dregs around him. The slow romance songs being steadily replaced by the fast paced rock the student council had managed to squeak by the school admin. There was a trickle of kids escaping the gym for the chill of the night, bundles of students chatting brightly about their plans for Christmas Break, and the occasional couple holding hands and whispering under their breath, dreading the moment they’d have to break apart for the last time. Mike didn’t really want to look at that precession, but his position at the far edge of the gym, right next to the exit, didn’t give him much choice. It was the stream of bright faces leaving, or the thinning crowd of dancers in the center of the gym, and somehow he’d decided that one terrible visage was better than the other. 

And El still liked girls. There was a heavy sigh, and Mike drank from his cup of punch. He probably should have seen this coming. The hesitation she’d had when he’d almost kissed her at the Byers house. The way her talks on the Supercom always seemed a little too short these last few weeks. All of it leading to the big moment when he’d leaned in on the dance floor, and she hadn’t. The awkward moment of realization. The apologetic look on her face, the soft welling of tears in her eyes as she explained herself. It felt like that moment was digging ever deeper into his mind. The pity on her face wriggling and squirming and screaming at him to pay more attention to his fuck up, to examine the moment in ever more excruciating detail so that he could wallow just a little deeper in it. 

Another drink of his punch. The taste was cloying sweet. It clung to his teeth, to his tongue. He could feel pressure building behind his eyes, and he fought it back down with all he had. He wasn’t going to cry. Not here, not on the ride home with Dustin (because his parents were going on some stupid date the same night), not at all if he could help it. He had been friends with El before tonight, and being turned down because she didn’t like your whole  _ gender _ was probably the best way it could have happened, if he was thinking somewhat logically. Or was it? What if he had been the schmuck that turned her off of guys? That didn’t make any sense, did it? Or was Mike such an ugly, overly-attached weirdo that she’d just lied to spare his feelings. Or-... he was crying now. Not a lot, really. Just a single tear, fed up with being held back, escaping down the trenches of his face before being wiped away. A whimper that he held down, a sigh that edged ever closer to whine. 

He debated getting up and asking Nancy if she could take him back home right now. Away from the Snowball and El and all the crap that went with it. It was a debate quickly cut short by the one person he  _ absolutely _ didn’t want to see right now. Will Byers. Will the Wise. Will, the most perceptive member of the Party by a  _ very _ long margin. Who was already climbing the bleachers to sit with him. Mike, after realizing he couldn’t just will himself to disappear from this plane of existence, rubbed his eyes a second time and waved a hand in Will’s direction, hiding his emotionally destroyed expression with a cheap grin. “Hey Will, what’s up?”

***

Will, in an honest to God shocker, was actually sort of enjoying this dance. After all, he'd been expecting a long night of sitting by the snack table and moping while the party enjoyed their respective dates (and Dustin whatever girls he picked up with that hair, god!). Instead, he’d been asked to dance by Monica Albright, and then by Carrie Silva, and then Max had decided ‘What the hell, I’ll dance with Zombie Boy too!’ and decided to sneak away from Lucas for a short while to preserve her view of him because wow, Lucas  _ really _ needed dance lessons and Max was gonna start losing toes if he kept stepping on her feet like that. The knot of apprehension he’d been carrying for the last few weeks had been loosened, and there was this ball of energy in his stomach that made him feel like a million bucks squeezed into a vest. Really, Monica was  _ cute _ , from an objective point of view, and Carrie had laughed at every one of Will’s soft attempts at humor. Maybe out of awkwardness, but that didn’t change the fact that it made him feel like a person again. Like a living, breathing, honest to god human. It didn’t matter that Will didn't feel attracted to any of them. It was just nice to be smiled at by someone that wasn’t part of the Party or his family for once. 

Still, it was nice to see them after all that heart melting social interaction. Dustin was gearing up for the punchline to a joke he was telling to Max and Lucas, who were still holding hands like the lovebirds they were, and El was already off, citing something like ‘Hopper said 30 minutes’ before quietly taking her leave, Mike nowhere to be seen. Of course, the Party had just assumed he was floating off into space after his dance with El, and they were content to let him be. For the first couple minutes anyway. After 20 minutes of waiting for Mike, it was starting to get late, and the boys were running out of ways to run their mouths. Will excused himself from the group, saying he was going to look for their missing member, and there was only a little pushback on the idea before Dustin let him go with an ‘I’ll tell the joke to you later.’ Will waved him off, and started to weave through the warm and chaotic mass that was a middle school dance, keeping to the periphery as much as he could. He scanned the crowds of dancers not really expecting to find Mike among them, searched the bleachers and hastily set up plastic tables, and finally, found him hunched over at the far end of the building. 

Something was wrong, obviously. He wasn't staring off into space with a dumb smile, or nervously contemplating the implications of his dance; he looked like he'd been punched in his emotional gut. Not that Mike couldn’t be moody or quiet or downtrodden -for the last year Mike had  _ exuded _ those qualities- but almost never  _ all  _ of them at the same time. That had been reserved for when El disappeared, and… oh. It’s about El.

Will took a deep breath, and replaced his instinctive frown with a soft smile. This was gonna suck, and Will didn’t want to come at his best friend with  _ that _ look on his face. The look where you know something is wrong but you want to pretend that you don’t know it while still infusing a tiny bit of pity. Will had been on the receiving end of that far too often recently, and he knew how it felt. So he wrapped himself in that smile, and started the ascent to Mike. It wasn’t much of a climb, but it was one made awkward and stiff by the smidge-too-tight vest Will wore, and by the context. It took Mike a second to raise his head to his friend, and in that time Will didn’t really know what to say. Luckily, Mike took care of that for him. 

“Hey Will, what’s up?” There was a tinge of joviality in there, but it sounded strangled, and forced. 

“Hi Mike! You’re kinda missing out on Dustin’s debut of the ‘parrot joke.’” The younger boy fished his hands in his pockets, and gave a knowing grin, which Mike matched with a sigh.

“To Max, or to Lucas?”

“Both, at the same time.”

Mike clicked his tongue. “That’s not gonna end well…” 

“You shoulda told Dustin that five minutes ago, I left before Lucas started punching him.”

A chuckle. “Smart move… So… how was the dance for you?” It was strange, seeing Mike awkwardly grasping for conversation. The boy could probably talk his way through all the air on Earth if you let him. Usually. 

Will shrugged his shoulders in reply. “It was… nice. I guess.”

Mike raised his brow. “It was  _ nice _ to dance with Monica Albright?  _ And _ Carrie?”

Will stared at the ceiling with a groan. “You saw me dance with Carrie?”

“Every girl within a five block radius saw that dude,  _ and  _ they saw how you made her laugh until she cried- did your mom pay her?”

“Shut up, Wheeler.” The smile came a little more easily to Will’s face. “I bet you didn’t see Nancy dance with Dustin though.”

Mike rolled his eyes. “You’re gonna have to lie better than that to escape this conversation dude.” 

“I didn’t lie! Ask Dustin!”

“Like I could trust a  _ word _ Dustin says about this.”

Will put his hands up. “Hey, you could always ask Lucas. Or Max. Or Nancy if you’re brave enough. When have I ever lied to you?”

There was a flash of something in Mike’s eye, almost imperceptible. Then he laughed it off. “Give me some time and I’ll come up with something.” And again, the awkward silence. Will rocked on his heels, and took a long moment to sit beside his friend. Mike was still cradling that cup. It reminded Will of Lonnie, in a perverse sort of way. Mike was nothing like him, of course, but the stance was his Dad to a tee. At the Baseball games he used to take him to, the Minor League games with the cheap beer and the faint smell of piss and the greasy food, that was the only time he was ever really alone with his Dad, and… he used to think they were good memories. But whenever Lonnie started to sit like that, he’d get shouty and he’d drink too much and he’d get them both kicked out of the game for heckling and he’d always take it out on-

“I guess I didn’t think of anything.” Mike mused. And the memory was gone. 

Will blinked, and huffed a chuckle. There wasn’t going to be a better time than now. “So… how’d it go with El? You don’t have to get into all the making out, I just want the broad strokes…” That failed to get a laugh out of Mike, so Will turned his head. The lanky teen was just staring at the thinning crowd. You could almost make out the dancefloor again. “Come on, I thought that was funny!”

“Let’s… just talk about it tomorrow, okay?” 

Will looked him in the eyes. There were tears. “Mike…”

“Will I just… I need some time to just, process some stuff okay? I don’t-”

“Mike!”

“-want to ruin your night with my shit okay!” The music was loud, but voices carry. The few other people on the bleachers turned, and quickly went back to their business. Mike put his hands to his face, and exhaled shakily. It was a habit from childhood, when he didn’t want someone to see him cry. Something panged in Will’s heart.

“Mike. There is no way in hell that’s happening, okay?” The shorter boy let a hand brush Mike’s knee, before grabbing it. Digging his fingers in. “We’re going outside, and we’re just gonna take a second to catch our breath. We don’t need to talk about anything. That work?” Will waited a beat, watching Mike wipe his eyes clean of any evidence of tears. His eyes were puffy, and there was only a semblance of composure caked on his face. He opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it, giving only a minute nod. Will nudged him with a smile, and led him down the bleachers, against the tide of dancers and couples and smiling faces, slipping out the locker room entrance and into the cold, December air. It was a clear, starry night, and Will’s breath seemed to billow from his nose as he quickly checked their surroundings, and found this side of the gym deserted. A small victory. It felt like nothing at all, as his friend began to fall apart beside him. 

Will wanted to say something, as Mike began to weep. The slender boy had pressed a shoulder against the wall, and let his own walls fall, one by one. The sniffles, the shuddering breaths, the wavering sob. It was textbook. There was a dark humor in that. Like this was some scene out of one of Mom's romantic movies. Will desperately wanted to be the character with the ineffable wisdom about girls and relationships and life. The guy with the magic words to turn this pain into a bitter chuckle. But he wasn't that. He was just a kid, watching someone he loved cry. There wasn't a handbook on what to do here. There was just a long, stretching piece of time. 

So Will wrapped an arm around Mike, and just held him. Held him in that awkward side hug, digging his fingers between the cold wall and his friend's expensive jacket, and he started to rock. He didn't know why he started. If you'd asked him at that moment, he wouldn't have realized he was doing it. But he did it. Gently leaning and pushing. Swaying in the biting breeze. Somewhere in that timeless moment, Mike turned into the hug entirely, and they both ended up sitting on the hard concrete, Will bearing his weight silently.

In a way, Will was enjoying it. The warmth, the need from his best friend, the arms wrapped around his chest. He would never admit it, of course. But that changed nothing about the feeling. Will's own desires, buried deep in his heart. There was a not-insignificant part of himself that wanted to hold his hand, pull his chin up, and kiss him right-

"Will?" Mike hadn't moved his head from its spot, buried in Will's shoulder. The tears had stopped some time ago. "I… I'm sorry…"

"Ah, I'm sure the dry cleaning will take the tears right out-"

A sigh. He lifted his head from the obviously stained shirt."Uh, no, you dick? I-" he laughed, and shook his head. "Fuck you Byers."

Will chuckled along with him. "I deserved that one." 

Mike sniffled, "A little, yeah." He gave the smaller boy a light shove, and the moment was over. The careless embrace had morphed into the casual look of two friends escaping the dance for a moment. Backs against the wall, no suspicious hugs. Will missed it already. "So…"

"So?" Will finished. 

"El… she doesn't like me…" Mike fidgeted for a second, playing with the buttons on his coat. Will took a second to process that. Okay, longer than a second. It was like a fundamental shift had been made to his world view. Grass was green, the sky was blue, and apparently the most telegraphed future couple in history  _ didn’t _ like each other? I mean, sure, what  _ else _ would have made Mike cry? But he’d figured it was something stupid-in-love Mike would have been sad about: like being a weird kisser or having bad breath or… God he didn’t know! Mike was a sensitive guy, he was anxious and self-conscious and it could have been anything else but this... How? How was this even happening?

“How…?” Will started. ‘How could she not like you’ was what he was going to say. But he didn’t know how to make that sound… Jeez, less queer? So he trailed off, leaving the question between them. 

“I… she doesn’t like boys…” Wait, what?

Will turned fully towards his friend. “What do you mean?”

Mike shook his head. “She’s a lesbian? She didn’t even know the word when she told me. I… I feel like an idiot for not seeing it…” 

“What? Dude, I don’t think anybody would have seen that… I mean, have you ever met a lesbian before?”

He grinned. “This is Hawkins, man.”

“Yeah, exactly. How were you gonna know?” With that, Will stood. “So, she doesn’t hate you or anything, right?” 

He shrugged. “I don’t think so…” 

“And you didn’t spit in her face and call her a fag?”

Mike looked offended. “I’m not an asshole, Will.” 

“I know you aren’t. I’m just pointing out that this isn’t the end of the world, man. She’s still your friend, and it's gonna be awkward and weird for a couple of weeks and then everything is gonna start being normal again.”

“Will… I don’t know…”

“I know you really like her, dude. Trust me. I’ve heard you on the radio before I mean-”

“Wait, what? What are you talking about?” 

Will just smiled “You know how I use my Supercom for static when I sleep? Well, I used to turn it to channel 19 since nobody used it…” 

Mike opened his mouth, and closed it again. Then he turned a shade of red that looked painful. “Sorry I interrupted, what were you saying?” He said, his voice small. 

Will filed that one away for later. “I was saying this: she really cares about you, and just because she doesn’t see you as a boyfriend doesn’t mean you can’t be friends.”

“I know that! I know we were friends before and we’ll be friends after I know I just… She’s beautiful, Will. She’s beautiful and awesome and… I put so much of myself into caring about her. I had all these stupid ideas about… lots of stuff, I guess. And now it’s gone and I don’t  _ know _ anymore.” 

_ I know how that feels too. _ There was a sudden rush of bitterness in his mind. He bit his tongue, and shook his head. “I get that Mike-”

“Do you?!” Mike looked surprised at his own words. Will just froze. Like the old armor he'd been wearing for years just sloughed off. He felt naked. And all at once, angry. 

“I didn’t mean it like that-” 

“Like what, Mike? You didn’t mean that I don’t know what loss is like because I’m not all over girls? Is that  _ not _ what you meant?”

“I’m sorry I just-...”

Will waited a beat. But Mike couldn’t find the words. “Whatever, man. It’s late, Mom wanted me home before 10 so-”

“Will, come on.” Mike put a hand on his shoulder, but the younger boy shrugged it off. 

“Just stop. Okay? The Party's probably looking for you." And Will walked away. 

***

Mom was pretty good at noticing things. Will knew that. Will was alive because of it. And for the most part, he prayed she  _ wouldn't _ be for the ride home. The youngest Byers was making his way through the thin crowd of parents and students at the edge of the parking lot. Most of the parents had just gotten there. Their car lights were still on, the engines still running. But Mom's Pinto was silent, and dark. She'd stayed the whole three hours. Even though Will said he'd be fine. It made Will upset, in a way. That feeling of being on a leash. But maybe that was just the dark, swirling cloud of thoughts in his head at the moment. The general anger that came from a fight with a friend. 

Or was it a fight? They hadn't really yelled at each other, no blows were exchanged, nothing that reminded him of fights he’d seen. But it still felt  _ raw. _ His blood boiled under his skin. Heat was creeping up his neck, and his face was flush. Mom was inside the car, lazily reading one of the ‘emergency books’ Will kept in the glove box, and immediately he realized that this was not at all the time to revel in the feeling. Mom could smell out a foul mood at 50 yards, and Will didn't want to talk about it. So he wiped his face clean, and took a deep breath, before knocking on the glass of the car door. 

She flinched in a way that made Will cringe, but quickly the surprise was forgotten, as she leaned over to unlock the door. "Hey you! Come on, get in, it's late!" She glanced at the clock.  _ "You're  _ late." 

"By a minute, Mom." 

"Hmm, maybe… still, I think I should get a punishment out of it, maybe a kiss? Hm?"

Will sighed, in the way teens often do, as he pulled himself into the passenger seat, and offered a cheek with an exasperated flair. Still, Mom took the offering with gusto, before messing his hair. "Hey! That wasn't part of the deal!" Will protested. 

"I didn't see you try to stop me. Ya know, there was a time that you enjoyed this stuff."

" _ Was. _ "

"Uh huh. So how was the dance?" Her smile grew a size bigger as she pulled out of the lot, and onto the long road home. 

"It was okay. I had fun."

"Oh? More words than usual? Did you dance with anyone?"

"Yeah. Max was getting tired of Lucas stepping on her so she danced with me. And two other people did too." Will missed the look of divine revelation on his mother's face, as he was thumbing through the book she'd had left on the dash. "I didn't think you'd like Neuromancer-"

"Nuh-uh mister. Who'd you dance with, and how was it?"

"It wasn't a big deal Mom…" She just waited. Giving him side-eye like the expert parent she was. Will cracked under the pressure after 30 long seconds. "Monica Albright and Carrie Silva. The dance was cool, and Carrie really liked my jokes. She's really nice, honestly." Mom was beaming. Honestly it was starting to get worrisome. Eventually she decided to speak again. 

"How'd my moves work?" 

"Oh my God."

"What? I showed you the spin thing, did you do that?"

Will was turning red. "yes." He mumbled.

"And did they like it?"

Will waited a beat. "...Okay, they did!"

She burst into laughter. 

The rest of the ride home was filled with a discussion on cyberpunk and Neuromancer as a whole. Apparently she's been reading the book for the past week, and has become something of a fan. In any case, Will made it through the car ride without too many more difficult questions, and was back to the safety of home in no time. After that, it was a matter of undressing and relaxing. Jonathan was out cold in his bedroom, AP midterms having drained him of his life force. Joyce was watching Cheers with the volume on low. Which left Will mostly free to do as he wished in his room.

There wasn't much he wished to do. That was the first problem he encountered that night. After setting the Supercom to static, so it wouldn't be silent in his room, he tried to go over options that seemed reasonable. Drawing felt like a wash. The journal he kept under his bed, beneath 7 layers of old blankets in the storage chest he owned, felt like nuclear waste in his mind. Writing in it now would cement these feelings forever. And he didn't want them. Despite this anger(?) in his heart, he couldn't bring himself to do it. And without that, he had nothing but old books and a half-hearted attempt at sleep to busy himself with. That, or finally managing to categorize all the old drawings he had, which was something he’d been meaning to do for ages. Lying on his bed, he groaned. Yeah, there was no better time than now. It was surprisingly difficult to will his legs to move, but eventually he pulled the two boxes from his closet, and began to run through them. 

It was a strange experience, to say the least. Things that he remembered drawing at six haphazardly thrown into massive piles that Mom eventually told  _ him _ to go through. The drawings of the woods around his house, of Fort Byers under siege by Uruk-hai, of their first D&D characters, all of it felt like diving into the past. The smell of crayon and colored pencils wafted through the room, as Will began to organize them into folders and sub-folders, taking the time to delicately write headers and placards for each. It was fun, in a way. Watching his art improve over time. Seeing faces and hands and  _ details _ emerge from what were once stick figures and box-men. 

The next box wasn't fun. The drawings were better, of course. They were newer, after all. But, there was a certain dread. Seeing his first drawings of  _ that _ campaign. The last one untainted. Seeing depictions of the red dragon fight Mike spent weeks preparing for. Of the Party's characters, as they'd described. The unfinished dungeon that Mike commissioned. After that, the colors he used changed. The first thing he'd drawn when he came back was dark and biological. When Mom wanted him to describe what he'd seen in a nightmare. Worms and vines and putrid rot. The characters returned eventually. But the colors were gone. They became darker, angry, painful to look at. The library. The Demogorgon. HIM. They all began to feature as well.

Will didn't label the folder he stuffed these in. He intended to burn them. That was when the Supercom crackled to life. "Will? It's Mike, Over." Will rolled his eyes, and reached to turn the thing off where it stood on his desk, when Mike interrupted him. "I know you're awake. Yeah, it's like 1am, but I know." Will looked to the clock on his wall, and surprised himself with the time. How long had he been looking? "And I know that you're on channel 14 because if you weren't on 19, you'd be on the channel that matched Will the Wise's level, because you're a huge dork." Will stopped. Was he that predictable? Yeah, probably. "I know you probably don't want to talk to me right now, but I just want you to listen, okay? I'm sorry for what I said. I was a dick, and I was wrong. I was just… confused. Or angry. I don't know. I wasn't myself. And I'm sorry. " There was a long silence, as Will's heart rose to his throat. "And I really hope you pick up soon because if you don't I'm gonna need to do this for all the other unused channels and that's gonna suck, so… yeah. Over." 

_ Why did I fall for this doofus? _ "Hey, Mike?" Will's voice came out thick. 

"Yeah?"

"It's okay. I forgive you. Just let me get some sleep."

"Yeah. Sorry about that."

"Stop being sorry, dude. You're my friend."  _ And I love you. _

"You're my friend too man. See you for the zero session tomorrow?"

Will just tapped the receiver, giving a pulse of static. There were tears in his eyes.  _ Damn it, Wheeler. How do you always manage to make me cry? _


End file.
